The better part of Saturday was spent sitting alongside the shore of Blue Lake in Lewis and Clark State Park, Iowa.  I had my Mitchell rod & reel combination (a gift I received for my 10-Year Mayo Clinic service anniversary), some very large wiggly night crawlers and a beautiful fall day in front of me. Fishing is one of my favorite pastimes; unfortunately today I “got skunked”.

My Grandpa Mueller taught me how to fish when I was just a little squirt. He also taught me the phrase “got skunked”, although he didn’t get skunked very often. Grandpa was a river fisherman and there were three spots around Winona, Minnesota that were his favorites. Number one on the list was across the main channel the Mississippi on the far side of the old John A. Latsch wagon bridge. If the fish weren’t hitting there, we’d go to the deserted Burlington Northern train station on the Wisconsin side, walk north on the tracks and fish just past the first trestle. Another spot was just south of the Black Horse Tavern on US 61 although I suspect that location was reserved for days when he wanted to stop afterwards and have a highball. We never caught many fish there.

Today I still fish the same way my grandfather taught me. When I’m fishing the bottom, I use a 3-way swivel. When I stick myself in the finger with a hook I say “oucha” just like my Grandpa did. I sure miss that man and would give anything to be fishing alongside of him for just one more hour.

DiAnne and I bought our 3-day, non-resident fishing licenses at the Onawa, Iowa Shopko. We carried out an extended conversation with the Shopko cashier who had to manually enter all of the information from our Minnesota drivers licenses into the Iowa DNR system. At one point she looked over her glasses at us and stated, “You know, most people from here go to Minnesota to fish.” The cost of the non-resident license was $17.50 and after the first two days I have a total of zero fish. A pessimist would say that’s not a good value. I look at it a bit differently. I’ve already got at least 10 hours of fishing in with one more day to go. The cost per hour is astoundingly low.